It’s funny but the Blu-ray became available for purchase on Play.com faster than its hitting theaters in my home country hah. So instead of seeing this in a cinema experience it came down to watching this on my room and watching all the special features & commentary.
The movie is based off the 1974 novel of the same name by John Le Carré. Set in London 1973-1974 the story flows of the British Intelligence known as the Circus (MI6), as a Soviet Union mole is suspected among their amidst.
The movie is a very slow and silent espionage spy thriller. It’s pretty much a battle of wits and human emotion between 7 people and it’s filled with paranoia. Is there a mole? Who is the mole? How long has he or she been working? Who can you truly trust?
The protagonist of the movie is George Smiley played by Gary Oldman. He’s old, experienced, calm, thoughtful and the ultimately planner here, but quite frankly also the ultimate paranoid more or less in the story. The whole movie is played by a variety of talent with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Peter Guillman. Colin Firth as Bill Haydon, Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr, David Dencik as Toby Esterhase, Toby Jones as Percy Alleline. You also have Mark Strong & John Hurt playing minor supporting characters. Incredibly well casted assembly with Tomas Alfredson as the director.
I won’t speak more of the plot as that would go more into detail, but the basic premise is that this is 1974 British intelligence trying to figure out who truly could be the Soviet Union mole and what is the big game picture here. It’s a silent, slow burned movie that deals with Agents having to go to against each other despite having been loyal partners for around 2 decades and more. It’s very subtle and emotional. I’d like to add that the setting is incredible well done, from clothing, atmosphere, to the hardware people used back then to their mannerism. The production value was incredibly detailed to say the very least. Cinematography was a bit overdone however, like I mentioned the movie is slow, I do feel it had some rather pointless scenes that truly didn’t add anything to the movie.
Blu-ray Extras:
The Blu-ray is filled with extras. However a lot of it is simple interviews of the writer, director and actors giving their insight on the movie, the book it’s adapting, how familiar we’re they with the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy and so forth. There are some good thoughts shared there, but at the end of the day this isn’t anything new and comes off as a rather norm feature in dvd/blu-ray.
Deleted scenes are also included and I’m thankful they’re deleted, because they add nothing to the overall story and movie already has scenes that show the exact same portrayal of these characters, so yeah good thing these didn’t drag the movie along, even though it’s just 5 minutes of deleted scenes.
There are also audio book samples, which I think is rather nice as each chapter is like one hour long, but at the end of the day who wants to leave their television open and listen to someone talk for an hour? The point of a television is to see moving picture. I guess they couldn’t get any episodes of the old television series for copyright reasons or other reasoning, but I would have found that more suitable then this.
I think the coolest special feature was a 30 minute interview with John Le Carré who wrote the novel, getting his insight and how his real life inspired the novel and he gets really deep into how his life effected this book, really getting down to the mannerism of the MI6 agents of the 70s. He even talks about how he felt Smiley was a character he felt was the father he never had and his own social awkwardness. Really its incredible how much he talks about his own life and even how World War 2 effected and molded him as a person. It’s too much to simply summarize.
Now for the biggest treat (for me at least) is re-watching this movie with the commentary of Gary Oldman & Tomas Alfredson! I’m a big fan of commentaries so there is obvious bias here, but re-watching the movie, knowing how the story unfolds but with the added emotional drama between the agents at each other’s throats with Tomas and Gary giving insight, debating, pondering and joking about the context just makes it much more fun to watch. They talk about how they adapted the scenes, what we’re cut, point out important little details that my eye didn’t notice the 1st time I viewed and so forth. Very pleasant to watch and listen.
Conclusion:
Pretty decent movie, I’d say what makes it unique amongst other spy thrillers is the slow, silent, paranoid filled run it had, with decent extras and a digital copy + DvD included, I felt the it was a well worth purchase. Recommending this movie for fans of: spy genres, cold wars. and the actor Gary Oldman.
